Are notifications eye-catching enough?

[Raine]

Hm, I've never really had the problem of not noticing notifications XD To be honest, the upper-right hand corner is probably the first thing my eyes gravitate towards whenever come online.

 

[Timbjerr]

I think making the text bold or a brighter color would help, but I don't think it's exactly necessary. I always look in that top-right corner every time I log in. XD

 

[Sonata]

I think that if something should be done it should simply be that the text is bolded or changed to a brighter color. But that's one of the main reasons I don't like the Garchompin skin, the welcome messages are right in the middle of every page and are more gigantic and pronounced than I think it should be.

 

[Judge Mandolore Shepard]

On the one hand, adjusting the text would make the notifications more noticeable. While on the other hand, every time I log in, I glance in the upper right corner right away. So my decision is split.

 

[starseed galaxy auticorn]

I do tend to miss them a lot. I agree they aren't very eye-catching either. I also agree with what Team Fail said with making them change color. Just as long as it's not a bright color or something like that.

 

[Cherrim]

How it used to work was that the notification line didn't show up at all unless you had notifications, right? So any notification added a whole bolded line to that welcome box and caught your attention right away. There needs to be something equally distinctive to catch your eye up there.

I think the most recent themes Garchompin'/Yggdrasil could do it really easily. The background of the notifications bubble could change to a bright colour, or even fade/flash colour, whenever the number inside is not zero. I wish that design could be implemented with other themes but it wouldn't work in themes with a heavy basis in the default vBulletin. The text needs to be fairly big to balance out the design and that's not usually the case with the default placement of the notifications. (If they all had a top bar like that, maybe it could be done though!)

What twitter has done recently is give you a little pop-up in the bottom-right corner of your screen (just on that page) when you get a notification. I believe it goes away very soon after, sooner if you hover over it and off with your cursor. You could look into doing something like that? It's a little invasive and honestly, kind of annoying, but people might prefer it over accidentally ignoring their notifications for hours on end. :(

Alternatively, you could just go back to what we had before and add a line in when there are notifications. Even if it's just a bolded "You have notifications!" right above the notification line, it would be a visual change that people might pick up on like they did the old notification system. Honestly though, the welcome messages should be drawing attention up there whether there are notifications or not. But for me, within an evening, I'd already retrained myself to just not look up there if I noticed anything slightly amiss because it was only ever a change in the welcome message and I was already starting to get repeats. So just one line might not cut it anymore. (But it'd probably work for me since I turned the welcome messages off, haha.)

I've been having a lot of problems noticing when I have notifications now. I was starting to type this up when I went "I wish I had a notification to test out how it might look on other themes..." and lo and behold I had two, lmao.

 

[Star-Lord]

Under the ColorFlatteredY skin I have a problem noticing when I get VMs :c The "messages" tab doesn't pop up like the notifications one does, and I guess VMs fall into the former category.

 

[Captain Gizmo]

the notifications on blossom shower doesnt really pop up. it gets bolder but it belnds with the red-pink color of them theme. you could check to make sure or if its only me.

 

[Pendraflare]

I found it a little easier to catch with the previous system, where if you had a notification, it'd say "Notifications: (x)" in the upper right-hand corner and override the private messages section completely. (This was on Y-Axis which i've used for a while.)

 

[Nathan]

Personally I don't really miss notifications cause I always glance at the top right of the screen so my only advice would be to bold it.

Also when you have time, please fix the messages dropdown/notifications in Forever Standing. They don't appear at all :(

 

[Treecko]

I generally look at notifications as soon as I log on so I've had no problem not noticing them. The new welcome greets also make them rather eye-catching. However , though, it could be easier if you put the notifications in a bold or a noticeable color (but not a bright neon color). Or they could flash when you first log on and only stop when you check them.

 

[Aquacorde]

I've really found myself not noticing them as much and that's annoying because I am really obsessive about making sure everything's been answered and I'm not ignoring anyone. :( There used to be enough of a change for me to catch when something happened, but I barely look when the welcome message changes? Basically seconding what Erica said haha. But maybe if entire section of the appropriate notification was bold? Like right now just the number is bold, isn't it? Why not have it like-- 0 Notifications | 1 Messages | Controls ? That way there's more for the eye to catch while also easily relaying which type of thing you have. Could also maybe make the greeting not bold to balance that as well idk.

 

[Nick]

I think it'd be cool if you add something else to it. Like move the Paypal button to a link or something in the bar below and have a Pikachu appear or something holding a little envelope in its place whenever you have a new message or notification.

 

[Aquacorde]

^ That would be really cute aa. <3 ofc there would have to be an on/off switch in the UCP right off the bat. :|

I'm already catching notifications more, thank you. :D And I'm so happy I can jump straight to my inbox again. <3

 

[mangamusicfan]

Personaly I love How the things are now.
If ya ask me you can keep it this way